Quason Turner was killed in a New Jersey hit-and-run in 2016. (Provided)

Over and over again, the American justice system teaches us that it has very little value for black lives. We yell "black lives matter" by the millions because everything about the arc of this nation tells us they don't. Of all the ugliness and brutality against black bodies that I've waded through and dissected over the past few years, it'd be hard to say any of them were a bigger kick in the gut than what I'm about to tell you. Now, a family that has already had their loved one snatched from them is suffering yet another unthinkable indignity.

On Monday, March 28th, 2016, 16-year-old Quason Turner (his friends and family called him Qua), was walking home from his after-school job at Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey. He was a wonderful kid known for his never-ending happiness and easy going nature. A popular sophomore at Pennsauken High School about 10 miles outside of Philadelphia, he had decided to go check on some friends before heading home for the night.

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It was a routine walk he had made many times before.

Except this time, by happenstance, his path crossed with a self-destructive woman with a long criminal record and previous addiction issues.

Susan Hyland, now 41, had a suspended driver's license at the time of the crash — one of 39 times her license was suspended, motor vehicle records show. Who knew a license could even be suspended so many times? She barreled over Quason as he crossed a highway, jumping over a median to see his friends.

The impact crushed his body, nearly decapitating him, and sent him flying dozens of feet away into a nearby parking lot. The sheer impact of the hit ripped the bumper off of Susan Hyland's car, crumpled up the entire front end, and shattered the front windshield, authorities said.

Hyland didn't check on Quason. She didn't call 911 for help. He died alone, a bloody mess, mangled by the car.

A passenger who was with her, a 19-year-old niece, called 911 several hours later. Before police got there, Susan Hyland discussed torching her car to destroy the evidence and even attempted to run for it when police arrived at her house, a prosecutor said.

What followed over the next year should've been an open and shut case for the family of Quason Turner. The evidence was overwhelming. The driver's identity was known. Her extensive criminal history was known. A witness was actually in the car when the crash happened.

But this is America.

Quason Turner, who had never been in trouble a day in his life, was black, and the woman who killed him, a lifelong criminal with a history of recklessness, was white.

That changes everything. In the weeks that followed Quason's death, Susan Hyland would begin to get break after break after break.

First, investigators claimed that since too much time passed before she was arrested, they could not confirm if she was actually under the influence or not. This is bogus. Her own attorney, Daniel Peshkin, would later say in open court that she "had used crack cocaine daily for 13 years and regularly consumed alcohol, PCP, prescription painkillers and marijuana."

Would drug tests not confirm that she was under the influence? Could discarded drug paraphernalia not be found in and around her home?

Whatever the case, prosecutors declined to charge her with vehicular homicide — the most serious charge she could have faced. It seems that fleeing the scene actually paid off for Susan Hyland.

Then, while simultaneously arguing that Hyland's intoxication could not be proven, her attorneys fought for her case to appear in drug court instead of criminal court. Do you see the hypocrisy there or do you need me to spell it out? A white woman avoids the most serious charge of vehicular homicide against her because drug use could not be proven, then successfully argues that her case should appear in drug court because of her lifelong drug use.

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Yeah, they approved her request, and knocked her case down to drug court.

There, she still faced the serious charges of leaving the scene of a fatal accident, causing death while driving on a suspended license and endangering an injured victim.

More than a dozen members of Quason Turner's family pleaded with the judge to send Susan Hyland to prison.

Susan Hyland was sentanced to probation after a 2016 hit-and-run that left a 16-year-old New Jersey boy dead. (Pennsauken Police Department)

"She left my son on the side of the road by himself," the boy's mother, LaTisha Turner, said during the Feb. 23 hearing, according to the Courier-Post. "She needs to be in prison. She doesn't deserve to walk," she continued.

"Why can't we have real justice?" asked the mother, standing with her husband and two surviving children.

More than 30 relatives and friends showed up that day. All of them still dismayed that they were even in the open drug court in the first place. Their loved one had been left to die like roadkill. The woman who killed him refused to call 911 for help and allegedly planned on torching her car and fleeing before she was caught, but they were drug court.

In spite of all of the relatives' pleas, the judge, who was also white, Edward McBride, Jr. was not moved.

Susan Hyland was not given 20 years in prison, or 10, or 5, or 2, or 1.

She was given probation and ordered to have drug treatment — with the threat of prison if she violates her probation.

The gall of the decision took the family's breath away. In court, they immediately erupted in unspeakable anger. The pain, according to witnesses, was thick and palpable. Their son, their grandson, their brother, their nephew, their friend was struck, killed, and abandoned. The person responsible seemed to get every possible break imaginable.

The outcome has caused outrage, even for Hyland's own mother — who wrote a letter this month to protest the weak sentence.

"We have been disgraced and ashamed of her behavior for years, and there are no words to tell all we have been through," Susan B. Hyland wrote in the letter to the Courier-Post. The mother called her daughter's sentence an "injustice" for Quason's family.